XIV. 1793. CHAP. the frenzy of the Fifth Monarchy men; and which proves that political frenzy will push its votaries to greater extremities than religious fanaticism. A furious multitude, headed by the revolutionary army, precipitated itself out of Paris; the tombs of Henry IV., of Francis I., and of Louis XII., were ransacked, and their bones scattered in the air. Even the glorious name of Turenne could not protect his grave from spoliation. His remains were found almost undecayed, as when he received the fatal wound on the banks of the Lech. The bones of Charles V., the saviour of his country, were dispersed. At his feet was discovered the coffin of the faithful du Guesclin, and French hands profaned the skeleton of him before whom English invasion had rolled back. Most of these tombs proved to be strongly secured. Much time, and Pr.Hist. and no small exertion of skill and labour, was required to Châteaub. burst their barriers. They would have resisted for ever the decay of time, or the violence of enemies; they yielded to the fury of domestic dissension.1 1 Lac. X. 264, 265, ii. 142. Etud. Hist. iv. 169. 41. of the spoliation of the tombs. Oct. 12. There is something solemn and interesting in the Particulars opening of the tombs of the departed great. It carries us back at once to far distant ages: the corpses in their grave-clothes, with their features sometimes unchanged, are revealed to the view; it seems as if the awful scene of the day of judgment had arrived, when the graves shall be opened and the dead arise. The measures of the French Revolutionists displayed, beyond all former example among men, this terrible spectacle. By a decree of the municipality of Paris on the 12th October, it was ordered that all graves should be carefully searched, in order to discover and bring to the public treasury any jewels, gold, silver, bronze, or even lead, that might be found. This order, joined to the rapacity of the searchers, and the fanatical zeal of the people, caused the tombs of the kings and paladins at St Denis to be ransacked with unparalleled eagerness. But immense labour was required to effect an entrance. The magnificent doors of bronze, XIV. 1793. the gift of Charlemagne, which guarded the entrance, long CHAP. resisted their efforts, but at length yielded to repeated blows of prodigious sledge-hammers, and were nearly shivered to pieces. One of the first tombs rifled was that of Pepin, father of that great conqueror. All the other mausoleums were opened and ransacked in succession the vast floor of the dark subterraneous church was covered with the bones of kings, mingled with the broken fragments of their marble sepulchres. The arms and the heads of Louis XII. and Francis I. were severed and heaped in a corner of the church. The monuments of 1 Duval, Turenne and du Guesclin were demolished and ruined. Souv. de la The abomination of desolation had penetrated every part 32, 46. of the cemetery.1 Terreur, v. which the were found. One of the tombs bore date so early as 580; it was 42. that of Dagobert, son of Childeric, king of France. State in Nearly the whole sepulchres of the first race of kings bodies of were destroyed in a few hours. Those of the Bourbon the kings family, from their more costly construction, required a longer time for their demolition. But it was at last effected, and the dead in their grave-clothes were drawn forth. The body of Henry IV. was so entire that it was instantly recognised from the prints by the spectators: a fragrant perfume, when the lid was removed from the coffin, filled the air, from aromatic substances in the interior of the skull; but as the grave-clothes were removed, the two deep fissures made by the dagger of Ravaillac still yawned almost as clean as when the wounds were received in the side. The venerable remains were at first the object of general respect; but, on the 14th, a Jacobin orator, Javoignes, roused the people by harangues; they tore the body in pieces, and cast the fragments into a vast ditch, filled with corpses and quicklime, where they were mixed with all the others, and irrecoverably lost. The body of Louis XIII. was still entire, but completely dried up; that of Louis XIV. nothing but a putrid mass, which emitted a fetid exhalation. His remains had come CHAP. XIV. 1793. to the nothingness so often foretold in his presence by Massillon and Bossuet, when surrounded by the pomp of Versailles. The body of Louis XV. was found at the entrance of the tomb according to custom, till his successor occupied his place, when the former king was removed to the vault. It exhibited so hideous a mass of putrefaction, that when the lid was removed from the coffin the pestilential exhalation filled the whole Abbey, and was even felt in the adjoining houses. To purify the air, discharges of musketry were fired around the Abbey: they were heard in Paris at the very moment that the head of 41, 49, 68. Marie Antoinette fell on the scaffold, in the Place Louis 1 Duval, iv. 43. Bodies of and Tu- XV.1 All the bodies found there, kings, queens, and heroes, were thrown into a vast trench and destroyed by quicklime. The body of du Guesclin was lost in this way. That of Turenne alone escaped, not from any reverence for his memory, but from the fortunate circumstance that, after it had been ordered to be thrown into the common tomb, two of the officers of the Museum of Natural History requested to have it, as being a "well preserved mummy," which might be of service to the science of comparative anatomy.* It was delivered to them accordingly, and carried to the Jardin des Plantes, where it lay for nine years in a store-room, between the skeletons of a monkey and a camel. In 1802, however, Napoleon heard of the circumstance, and had the body of the illustrious warrior removed to the church of the Invalides, where it now reposes beside his own mortal remains.2 215, p. 216. After the tombs had all been ransacked, and the bodies Duval, iv. Oct. 13. Prudhom. Rév. de 68, 78. thrown into the common trench, where they were destroyed by quicklime, the whole jewellery, plate, and * "L'ordre avait été déjà donné de transporter le corps de Turenne au dépôt général des autres cadavres, lorsque deux administrateurs du Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle réclamèrent le corps de ce grand homme, comme une momie bien conservée qui pourrait servir aux progrès de l'anatomie comparée. On le deposa dans un grénier, où il est resté neuf ans entre le squelette d'un singe et celui d'un chameau !"-DUVAL, Souvenirs de la Terreur, iv. 74. XIV. 1793. treasures, found in the treasury of St Denis, and all the other CHAP. churches in France, as well as what had been extracted from the tombs, were brought in great pomp to the Convention, where they were poured out in confusion on the floor, amidst deafening acclamations of "Vive la République.”* 44. of monu all France. This was immediately followed by a general attack upon the monuments and remains of antiquity throughout Destruction all France. The sepulchres of the great of past times, of ments over the barons and generals of the feudal ages, of the paladins, and of the crusaders, were involved in one undistinguishable ruin. It seemed as if the glories of antiquity were forgotten, or sought to be buried in oblivion. The skulls of monarchs and heroes were tossed about like footballs by the profane multitude; they made a jest of the lips before which nations had trembled. Nothing could equal the fury with which the populace, in the greater part of France, threw themselves on the monumental remains in the churches. It would seem as if their rage at the dead was even greater than their exasperation at the living. Hardly any monuments of note escaped dilapidation. This devastation was much more complete than in Scotland during the fury of the Reformation; for there the images and monasteries only were destroyed-the graves were not rifled. The monumental remains which had escaped their sacrilegious fury, were subsequently collected by order of the Directory, and placed in a great museum at Paris, in the Rue Petits Augustins, where they long 1 Personal remained piled and heaped together in broken confusion observation. -an emblem of the Revolution, which destroyed in a xi. 53. few years what centuries of glory had erected.1 Chaque section de Paris, et des communes voisines, se fait un honneur d'aller déposer sur l'autel de la patrie les dépouilles opimes de la superstition; et la Convention ne sait ce qu'elle a le plus à admirer, ou la magnificence des dons, ou le zèle du patriotisme. Tout Paris et les communes voisines sont décatholisés. Qui pourrait compter les immenses richesses de Brunelle et de Franciade ci-devant St Denis-tout ce pompeux amas de hochets ridicules qu'avait enfouis dans les églises la stupidité de nos rois."-PRUDHOMME, Révolutions de Paris, No. 215, p. 213. VOL. III. M Deux Amis, CHAP. 1793. 45. of Christi lity. Nov. 7. Having massacred the great of the present, and insulted the illustrious of former ages, nothing remained to the Revolutionists but to direct their fury against Abjuration Heaven itself. Pache, Hébert, and Chaumette, the anity by the leaders of the municipality, publicly expressed their determunicipa- mination "to dethrone the King of Heaven, as well as the monarchs of the earth." To accomplish this design, they prevailed on Gobel, the apostate constitutional Bishop of Paris, to appear at the bar of the Convention, accompanied by some of the clergy of his diocese, and there abjure the Christian faith. That base prelate declared that no other national religion was now required but that of liberty, equality, and morality."Many of the constitutional bishops and clergy in the Convention joined in the proposition. The Convention received them with loud applause, and gave them the fraternal kiss. Crowds of drunken artisans and shameless prostitutes crowded to the bar, and trampled under their feet the sacred vases, consecrated for ages to the holiest purposes of religion. The sections of Paris shortly after followed the example of the constitutional clergy, and publicly abjured the Christian religion. The churches were stripped of all their ornaments; their plate and valuable contents were brought in heaps to the municipality and the Convention, from whence they were sent to the mint to be melted down. Trampling under foot the images of our Saviour and the Virgin, they elevated, amidst shouts of applause, the busts of Marat and Lepelletier, and danced round them, singing parodies on the Hallelujah, and dancing the Carmagnole. Momoro, the * Gobel's abjuration of Christianity was in these terms :-" Aujourd'hui que la Révolution marche à grands pas vers une fin heureuse, puisqu'elle amène toutes les opinions à un seul centre politique; aujourd'hui qu'il ne doit plus y avoir d'autre culte public et national que celui de la liberté et de la sainte égalité, parceque le souverain le veut ainsi; conséquent à mes principes, je me soumets à sa volonté, et je viens vous déclarer ici hautement que dès aujourd'hui je renonce à exercer mes fonctions de ministre du culte Catholique. Les citoyens mes vicaires ici présens se réunissent à moi : en conséquence nous remettons tous nos tîtres. Puisse cet exemple servir à consolider le règne de la liberté et de l'égalité. Vive la République !-GOBEL." |